V. H. King's Ink

Deck: The Marigold Tarot || Cards: Five of Swords; (The Devil); The Hanged Mxn; Nine of Wands

For Chester and Mike and everyone else

cast out of Eden.

Two hours of sleep last night, my eyes full
of onion and soot now. Annoyed by my habits,
thinking I would have everything set up before
I started posting my findings. That thorny
refrain:

Nobody cares. Nobody
fucking cares!

I set the lie aside, reaching for verse instead—
first from the guardian angel of my fractured
youth, guiding me with promise:
Leave out all the rest. I wish I could
fall away into that advice
forever, but there is only this moment and
the next and the one after that
to practice with.

“Letting go is hard.” The imagined dialogue is not
untrue, given the message I sent; rambling as ever
in my defeated state. There is more, mingled
somewhere in the mess of my feelings, mangled—
but I can’t make the connections any more
apparent than the fatigue of what is facing me:

Get through this, another
day. On earth’s side of silk,
I'm bound to stay.

Don’t say it, I tell myself. Don’t wish it, don’t
dream. It is not worth such things.
Stay the course, I whisper instead. Stay
true, and feel. Like in

the book I just finished, because the rare grace
of finding myself between two covers means
comfort is always one turn, one line, one break
away. I’ve never known where anything
ends or begins so it makes sense I battle adversity
for and from and by myself. I am between

the pages of every always, heavy with wet ink
and missed heartbeats that boomerang—boom—
booming and banging and rearranging
through lyrics and heat; love and lifetimes
coursing throughout this bloodless
body of ancestral-lined bones. I am a relic,

written over through and through, a warrior
riddled with cracks from spirits and secrets
only faceless guardians know:

No amount of self-sought fury
will bring back
the glory of innocence,

reminding me I cannot return to a home
I’ve never known. Some lovers promise
I am real; others embrace my spectral
hood of extensions, expansions, beyond
what I can’t bear. Escape preys far, prowls,
growling wide-open roars for me

but angels know which dream has been set
apart for me, and hope will not rid itself
from my spirit, nor will it quit dragging
my fevered body along—anchored
as it is in eternity and braided
into the terror of this burning world.